Alyssa Ahlgren writes wisely about Covid-19 and its genuinely dangerous and lethal consequence: Covid Derangement Syndrome. (HT Mark Perry) A slice:
I can spout all of the statistics in the world to present the case that COVID is a virus to be wary of, but nothing to fundamentally fear to the point of destroying liberty and livelihoods. However, it doesn’t matter because the narrative stands — if you are not unrelentingly afraid of the virus, you are an evil, unempathetic science-denier who doesn’t care if thousands of people die. This false binary has found itself embedded in our politics as well as our culture. False binaries are the death of reason and the death of discussion.
Are Covid death counts inflated? The claim that they are is indeed plausible.
James Agresti over at Just Facts offers some essential facts about Covid. (Warning: Do not click on this link if you enjoy witnessing humanity being petrified by fear of Covid-19.) A slice:
A much more complete measure of C-19’s lethality also includes the years of life lost by each victim. Yet, determining this is not a simple matter of subtracting their ages at the time of their deaths from the average U.S. lifespan. This is because:
- the average U.S. lifespan includes the deaths of young people, which drives this figure down relative to what it is for older people. So even though the average life expectancy from birth is 79 years, people who are 79 years old live an average of 10 more years.
- C-19 is more deadly to people with preexisting health problems, and these people have lower average life expectancies than healthy people of the same ages.
Based on the average life expectancies of people of different ages and the ages of people who have died from C-19, Just Facts calculates that C-19 robs an average of 13.5 years from each of its victims. This is an overestimate because it does not account for preexisting health conditions, and one working paper calculates that the actual figure could be as low as 1.76 years in the United States.
Even based on the exaggerated figure of 13.5 years, the average years of life for each person who dies of C-19 is much less than other common causes of untimely death. For example, accidents rob an average of 30.6 years of life from each victim, while suicides cost an average of 35.6 years. And once again, these deaths occur every year, while C-19 is unlikely to have an ongoing high death toll because of its vulnerability to antibodies and limited prospects for mutation.
It’s small, but it’s a relatively rare victory in the fight against Covid Derangement Syndrome.
Stacey Rudin is spot-on in this Twitter thread. (HT Lyle Albaugh)
And finally (and also from Lyle): at least this young woman is better protected from Covid!